Editing 1

Hello, today we were instructed to talk a little about our editing and how everything is coming together. Here is what I have to note: 

 The title of our film is "Do No Harm" because it's a thriller/ horror movie and the title is meant to create slight sarcasm due to the ending of the opener. The font we plan to use for the title is called "Chiller", which is part of CapCut. The editors in my group are Suri Nguyen and Niliem Valdes; they work together to edit long clips and put them together. While they worked on most of the editing, my other group member and I contributed to deciding and opinionating on fonts, effects, and transitions we should use in the film. For audio, we used sounds like eerie music in the background for scenes where there is a tension build, EKG monitor beeps for hospital scenes, and  faint breathing sounds for the unconscious husband. Additionally, for video effects and transitions, we added a black fade-out effect to transition the scene of me (protagonist) crying because my husband is in a coma into the doctor explaining what's wrong with my husband. We are planning to use transitions such as match-cuts, j-cuts, and more as we get more clips.  On a different note, some problems that we encountered during filming were trying to amplify the audio and suppress the background noises that occurred during filming, as well as having to make several small cuts to different scenes because our actors kept laughing or smiling during a sad scene. Keeping a straight face was hard. What we could do to fix these problems is record a voiceover and overlay the current audio with the new one and practice scenes without recording to avoid re recording the same scene. Currently, my group has spent little time on editing and focused on the basics of editing, like putting clips together and adding a few transitions. We plan to focus more on editing when all the clips are collected. An estimated amount of time we have spent on editing so far could be about 40 minutes to an hour at most. After school today we will continue to film for the remainder of our clips. 

Peer Reviews of Initial Draft

In today's class, we showed 2 groups the clips we have so far collected and edited together. We discussed with each group 4 things that could aid the film in being better put together, and what are some things that need to be fixed regarding sound, costume, camera angles, lighting, etc. 

After peer reviewing my work with the group that Elijah, Noam, Bianca and Anna are part of, they gave me the useful criticism that follows: 

• The plot was hard to follow through every clip.
• After the part where the main character puts their head on the other person's hand, the transition used, which was sort of a blurring out of the scene into the next, made it seem like the next clip could have been a delusion of the main character or a dream-like state. It made the clips even more confusing and didn't clarify the fact that it was supposed to be a transition to the next day. 
• The audio is of bad quality, and it is hard to hear the characters speaking. It is especially important for the scene where the doctor is telling the crying lady what is wrong with her husband, since this is an important context for the film. 
• Where did the second patient come from?
• The clips are too long and don't add much to the storyline 

Finishing the peer review with the last group and grabbing their input. I followed up with another group, which consisted of Milo and Reinaldo, to collect further opinions on the clips we have so far made. This is the criticism they had:

• The camera angles and afterward effects were good, but the sound needs improvement for the first clip. 
•  The second clip needs a cut into different shots so it doesn’t feel too long and doesn't bore the audience because of the lack of movement. 
•  I personally would add a more emotional appeal to receiving life-changing news. 
• More diegetic sounds should be integrated to make the atmosphere of the hospital natural and less quiet. 

After taking into consideration these opinions, the next time we film, we will draw focus on adding some sort of background sound, as well as speaking during filming, doing voice-overs, so the audio quality is better for the characters speaking. We will also add more transitions as we collect more clips, as well as change the particular transition we set between the 2 clips we originally had. Another thing we will change is the length of the second clip since many of the other groups commented that it is too long. If the length is necessary for the dialogue, they suggest changing between different angles to make the scene less static.